Holy Grudge
by Thefallenheart
Summary: Some one has attempted to murder a high ranking member of Kains empire and it is up to his brothers to find out who done it. Unfortunately none of them are exceptionally bright. Set a long time after Defiance.
1. Prologue

Four of the sons of Kain looked down upon the fifth

Four of the sons of Kain looked down upon the fifth. They had done as much as they could for him and that was about all that anyone could say. When you are trying to heal someone it is very hard to know what to do when what needs healing is _everything_. They just had to hope that the burns were not much more than skin deep. The second best doctor in all the lands had been called for and great expense had been spent transporting him from Meridian City to the Abby by magic. Unfortunately the best doctor in all the lands was probably Rahab and as Rahab was the one lying an inch from death and it was taking all of Turels power of will not to come out with the distasteful comment of 'physician heal thy self'.

The doctor had tried to shoo the four of them out of the room and had just about managed to get them to stand back a bit further from the sickbed that was threatening at any moment to become a deathbed. Melchia, Dumah, Turel and Raziel all watched the prone figure on the bed with expressions ranging from devastation to carefully blank.

We should all be here, Turel thought. Both Kain and Zephon and maybe even Lady Umah. They were in a strange way, if not a family, then at least friends. But Zephon had vanished with no trace years ago, Lord Kain was hibernating and Lady Umah was standing guard over his cocoon and had sworn never to leave until her husband woke up. But still, for the passing away of one of them they should all have been present.

The doctor rummaged around in his bag for a glass jar that looked to be containing a violently green substance. Breaking the wax seal an unscrewing the jar the room was almost instantly filled with an almost overpoweringly chemical smell. Taking a liberal handful of the stuff he began to gingerly spread it over the burnt areas of Rahabs broken body, which was all of it. The curious and slightly distressing smell of the ointment mercifully managing to bury the extremely distressing smell of burnt and scorched flesh. After a few minuets a servant came quietly entered the room with a big pile of cushions. The four brothers carefully griped a corner of the bed sheet and, with extreme care, lifted Rahab so that he was suspended above the bed. The doctor placed the cushions so that as the patient was lowered he gently assumed a more upright position.

'Will he…?' Dumah left the question hanging. To his brothers amazement there were acutely tears forming in his eyes.

'Survive? Possibly. At this point its hard to say.' Answered the doctor looking up into Dumahs brutal features. 'I am given to understand that you believe prayer to be useless and that the gods neither listen nor care but I feel in this case it could not hurt. I assume you have some idea of who did this?' Only a slight inflection at the end of the sentence indicated the question and he was slightly taken aback by the expressions of incomprehension the question was met with.

'We assumed that it was an unfortunate accident. That he had fallen asleep, the sun had come up and he had been caught on his balcony. He was well known for doing that. This would just be the first time he ever locked a door behind himself.' Said Raziel. The other clan leaders nodded. Rahabs annoying habits of leaving doors open was well known to them.

'Lord Raziel, in my youth I worked at the morgue in the slums of meridian. I can recognize any injury to a body both mundane and exotic and I can spot a number of very troubling ones on this body here.' Here he stopped to note the expressions of the four worried brothers. 'The eye and ears were not, as I first thought, burnt off but have in fact been removed by some sort of blade. You will note the delicate slash marks above the eyebrows and below the eye sockets. If I was to hazard a guess, I would say an almost scalpel like implement. You will note also the removal of the fangs and tong. There is also strong evidence of a blunt object hitting him very hard on the back of the head.' A troubled expression seemed to pass the old mans face again. 'I have no idea what did the burns, if he was a fledgling I would say prolonged exposure to sunlight but he is most definitely not a fledgling. Some sort of burning oil weapon or sorcery, maybe?'

There was a collective shuffling of feet and exchanging of eye contact before Raziel, being the oldest, was nominated to speak.

'Brother Rahab cannot abide the sun. It burns him like it would a fledgling. But I implore you not to tell anyone of this weakness, healer.' It had always been a closely guarded secret amongst the Rahabium and the species as a whole. Vampires of lesser historical importance could always lie about their age and claim to be younger than they were, but not so poor brother Rahab. Rahab who had cured all vampires everywhere of their fear of water could never be cured of the sun. Rahab the Benevolent, Rahab the nearly Pacifist, Rahab the Recluse. He was not loved by everyone but as far as the brothers knew he was hated by no one. He went though life in a cloud of mild, half-remembered amiability. You could not hate such a creature. No one cared enough to hate him, although the evidence in front of them said otherwise.

* * *

Reluctantly he awoke. It was not a pleasurable or quick process. First the dull, sharp, primitive parts of the brain did their tally of the body: Two arms, two legs, correct number of digits, bit of metal still stuck in left ear and the mouth tastes of recycled yesterdays. Then the more sophisticated bits of brain began to flicker on: Muscles feel cramped from sitting here two long, stomach feels empty, nose feels itchy, toes feel cold and eyes feel gummy. And finely the bit of the brain he used for being himself arose form dormancy: Still wedged behind the throne, the cocoon is beginning to fall apart, feel a bit dizzy and I'm still called Kain.

There was a small cracking, like that of eggshells as he stood up and the outer crust of the protective shell broke away. He blinked in the dazzling light of the moon as it shone though the glass dome of his throne room. Here came that dizziness again.

Sticking a hand out to steady himself on the arm of the throne he haw what state his hands were in. Firstly they were no longer yellow and secondly there were five clawed fingers. Bringing his albino white hand up to his face he felt that the bony crests had gone. A mirror. That's what he needed right now. Something to stop his new form from throwing any new surprises at him.

He took one step in his search for something reflective and the dizziness returned in crashing wave that ended with the Lord of all Nosgoth sprawled at the foot of his own throne in a growing pool of curse words and foul language.

Someone else had been in the throne room sleeping. He had not realised it until the noise of their steady breathing had stopped. Who ever it was, they were holding their breath pretty well.

'Kain, is that you?' turning his head he could make out the beautiful silhouette of his wife and queen. Turning his head his amber eyes met lavender eyes and he knew he was safe.

'How bad do I look?' he asked through gritted teeth. He had been terrified to change this time. So terrified. Every time he had ever changed in the past he had been moving further and further away from humanity and becoming a grotesque monster. He dreaded her answer.

'Like the day we first met. Do you remember?'

Kain did remember. An eternity ago she had watched over him as he slept, not entirely different to what she had just been doing now. She had be a healing angel to him and he had been death its self to her. That was how he had first met her, but she had first met him this time before he had met the Sarrafan Lord in open combat upon the plains before Meridian. In the non-existant timeline Kain had been defeated and an even darker age had spread across the land. And dear sweet Umah had given him a second chance. In this timeline Kain had ripped the Sarrafan Lords head clean off, taken the Nexus Stone as a trophy and used the severed head to club to death Faustus, Marcus and Sabastian. In this timeline he had first met Umah just before she and her sire had moved out of the old estate deep in the Dark Forest. She had been turned scarcely a month, and she was just as lovely as Kain remembered her to be an eternity and innumerable mistakes ago.

'Come on now.' She said placing a slender arm under his elbow and helping him of the ground. 'You will feel much better after a warm bath and some fresh clothes.'

Nice warm bath. Now there were some nice words. Gods bless Rahab. Tomorrow he would have to go and say thank you to his ascetic fledgling.


	2. Murder in Meridien

It was with heavy heart the Melchia, youngest of Kains children, travelled back to his clan territory of Steinchenchroc

It was with heavy heart the Melchia, youngest of Kains children, travelled back to his clan territory of Steinchenchroc. The moon shone of his bald head, the habits of an age died reluctantly and travelling at night had once been a two fold necessity; as a fledgling he had always been terrified of the suns burning touch and secondly it had once hidden decaying rotten flesh. Not so anymore. The sun had never in centuries given him anything worse than sunburn and Rahabs gift of water tolerance had toughened his flesh against all forms of rot and canker. But still he got edgy in direct sunlight, a mode of behaviour he would never loose. It was like with tailors. All womanly clothes have the buttons on the opposite side to the ones on manly clothes so that servants could help them dress. Such pointless servitude had been all but abolished soon after Lord Kain became undisputed ruler of the known world but still after all these centuries women's clothes were best buttoned left-handed.

'Are we nearly there yet?' Asked Lerrissa. Lerrissa was the youngest member of Melchia's clan. It was quite rare now that a human was awarded the Dark Gift. Vorador had insisted that Kain put a limit on the world's vampire population so as not to 'deplete the food source' as the Dark Father had delicately put it. Melchia had interpreted that as 'Lets not give the humans reason to hate us so utterly as before. Let us learn from our mistakes'. It had been a law announced within the same weak as the one that decreed that any vampire that killed a human was to be decapitated, dismembered and burnt, preferably in that order. He had brought her along to the Abby because she needed to get out more and meet new people.

'Just over this next hill.' Answered Melchia. It would be nice, Melchia thought, if they could ride on horseback like the humans did. It would make travelling around much quicker and easier than having to scurry from one place to another like you're always late for an appointment. Which, given the fact that he was not as fleet of foot as his brothers was too often the case. But it was a rare horse indeed that would allow a vampire, a carnivorous _predator_, on its back.

'Um, sire, the sun is coming up.' She said pointing at the horizon, through the gap in the trees. The underside of the clouds were edged in finest gilt and they were reflecting the gentle pre-dawn light upon the world as gentle and beautiful as a lovers kiss.

'So?' asked Melchia his brow furrowing ever so slightly in puzzlement. Then it struck the old lord as he took in the worried anxiety on his fledglings face. She will burn when the sun comes up.

Thankfully Melchia spotted an abandoned hut left by a charcoal burners where they could wait out the sun.

It was nearly midday now. The sun was at its highest and one of the vampires was in the willow woven hut and the other was sitting in its shade listening to the chatter of birds and trying to get some sleep.

'Sire?'

'Yes Lerrissa.'

'Why did we visit the Abby?' And there was the question. Melchia and all the brothers had sworn not to tell anyone the state brother Rahab was in for fear that dissident factions might try to act upon this and usurp power, or worse yet declare themselves independent. So far Lerrissa had shown no interest in the nature of the visit and instead was just happy to venture out a little in the world.

'Just to visit the Rahabium, exchange news, visit relatives that sort of thing.' Answered Melchia with forced casualness. 'How did you spend your time?'

'Reading. They have a really big library.' Said Lerrissa.

Melchia sighed. She would have made a better Rahabium than a Melchium. No real social life, few real friends, nose always in a book and an annoying tendency to leave doors open. Definitely similarities with cloistered brother Rahab and his strange brood.

'You liked the library?' Asked Melchia trying as hard as he dared to direct the conversation as far away from anything dangerous as possible.

'Oh yes, it had an entire gallery dedicated to works on necromancy.' She was obviously impressed. Melchia knew full well that it was the biggest library outside of Meridian University and in some specialized areas, usually magic and theology, far surpassed it. Not that he was really interested in such things. Books did not help get the harvest in any quicker when it starts to rain nor did they bring good weather. The only books that Melchia owned were the ones Rahab occasionally bought him as a gift, the record books and children's books that he read to very small children when the men and woman of Steinchenchroc were all busy bringing in the harvest and they needed the very small children out of the way for a few days.

'When you are old enough and can stand in the sun I will see what I can do about getting Rahab to let you study there.'

'Thank you, sire. Sire?'

'Yes, Lerrissa .' Answered Melchia, stifling a yawn.

'Whose clan symbol is the Ankh?'

'No ones. It's bad look to take that mark as heraldry. Why do you ask?

'I saw a human with it branded on his shoulder.'

For the rest of that day Melchia got no sleep. Sunny though it was a chill had come over Melchias very soul. All the elder vampires knew all to well what that mark meant.

* * *

The map of bloodlines took up quite a large wall in what the townsmen still referred to as The Old Sarafan Keep, much to Voradors annoyance. It quite accurately showed the lineage, affiliation and relative age of every known vampire in the world. Currently he was trying to add another one to the cloud of names congregated under the name Melchia. It was not easy. The map was mostly made up of Voradors descendants, first generation under Vorador, second under them, third under them and so on for six or seven generations like some sort of pyramid. It was not like the Dark Gift diluted from one generation to the next. This left two spaces on the wall, one in the top left occupied for oddities like Magnus and Deliyla and such other vampires and their little broods that were not acutely his descendants but had been spawned by a patriarch who was spawned by a child of Janos Audron and none of them were alive to claim leadership of them. And then there was the dysfunctional family of Lord Kain in the top right; six fledglings and a small cloud of second generation fledglings under those, each one turned personally by their patron.

The Dark Father reached out with name and pin carefully grasped in his left claw, right claw holding on to the top of the ladder tightly enough to leave finger prints. The ladder gave a slight tremor.

'Blast it Ivor! Hold the ladder still I said! Still! Meaning the absence of movement!' shouted Vorador to the servant nearly thirty foot beneath his clawed feet.

'Sorry my lord, I'm doing my best.' Shouted back Ivor from the bottom of the ladder. He was nearly fifty and had been a faithful servant of the vampiric patriarch for thirty-five of those. He had been promised the Dark Gift should any of Voradors children meet an unfortunate end, provided he was not the reason for this of coarse.

He stretched out his arm again, pin and name card carefully held in hand, the pin made contact with the wall and the pressure from his thumb was cautiously increased until the name Lerrissa was placed resolutely amongst the Melchium.

Suddenly and without warning ladder and vampire came tumbling to the carpeted floor. Reflexes honed to perfection by two sarafan crusades and innumerable wannabe vampire slayers caused him to bounce back to his feet the very instant he came in contact with the ground. Ivor was on his knees collapsing sideways, arterial blood gushing from his ravaged throat, his assailant still standing behind him with his dripping knife held expertly in right hand. With two bounding strides the last child of Janos stood before the intruder; six foot ten inches of big eared, solid muscled, green skinned, sado-hedonistic brutality held in check only by the fragile ideals of duty, good will and responsibility.

It seemed that time had all but stood still. The trespassers blade caught the light of the rooms only oil lamp that Ivor had placed on the bottom of the ladder, now forlornly and unceremoniously rolling across the carpet, casting disturbing shadows across the inhuman features of the old vampire.

There was a law against murder but this was a rule far, far older and more fundamental to vampire kind 'do not go where uninvited'. Not only had this person broken that oldest of rules but also they had slashed the throat of one of his best friends. His right claw was brought around in a blindingly fast movement that left the assailant flat on the ground with a shattered neck and broken skull.

Wasting no time the old sire teleported to the nearest heart beat he could sense, a brief glimpse of someone's living quarters, grabbed the startled human and teleported back to his wounded servant in the blink of an eye.

'Bandage that.' Instructed Vorador to the shocked human, ripping of the sleeves off his well-tailored shirt. In less time than it took the sleeves to fall to the ground he was gone again. Another instant later a rather surprised doctor appeared.

'Physician, heal this man!'

The healer quickly knelt besides the injured man, a troubled expression crossed his face and he stood up again. 'I cannot, my lord. He is dead. I'm sorry.'


End file.
